Read the First Chapter of Jill Baguchinsky’s Buzzy YA Horror Debut So Witches We Became
Horror is one of the most popular genres in fiction right now, particularly in the young adult space. Some of the biggest YA titles of the year are horror stories, or at the very least, those at are horror adjacent, exploring everything from literal monsters under the bed and faceless killers stalking high school hallways to toxic friendships and the psychological impact of generational trauma. Jill Baguchinsky’s YA debut So Witches We Became is a horror story that’s poised to become one of the buzziest titles of the year, a furious, timely exploration of sexism, sexual violence, and the unspoken rage women often carry with them each day.
Described as a queer feminist spin on the Stephen King classic The Mist, the story follows Nell, who’s spending spring break with her friends on a private Florida island. Though the group has been growing apart for many reasons, but she’s excited for a last hurrah of togetherness before college. At least, until her BFF Harper’s antagonistic boyfriend shows up unexpectedly. Things get really weird, really quicky, particularly when the group suddenly finds themselves mysteriously unable to leave the island, trapped by a toxic haze.
Here’s how the publisher describes the story.
For high school senior Nell and her friends, a vacation house on a private Florida island sounds like the makings of a dream spring break. But Nell brings secrets with her—secrets that fuse with the island’s tragic history, trapping them all with a curse that surrounds the island in a toxic, vengeful mist and the surrounding waters with an unseen, devouring beast.
Getting out alive means risking her friendships, her sanity, and even her own life. In order to save herself and her friends, Nell will have to face memories she’d rather leave behind, reveal the horrific truth behind the encounter that changed her life one year ago, and face the shadow that’s haunted her since childhood.
Easier said than done. But when Nell’s friends reveal that they each brought secrets of their own, a solution even more dangerous than the curse begins to take shape.
So Witches We Became hits shelves today, and if you’re unsure whether this YA horror debut is for you, check out the book’s first chapter below.
Then
Twelve Years Ago
The girl can’t move. Her eyes snap open but her limbs are stiff as stone.
The night light her father thought would help creates as many shadows in the dark bedroom as it chases away. Those shadows shiver as lightning glints between the slats on the window blinds, chased by a low crash of thunder. The enormous Maglite flashlight, another desperate gift from her father, lies useless under the pillow, inches and miles away at the same time. She can’t turn on a flashlight if she can’t move to grab it.
Her gaze shifts panic-quick to the closet door. It’s closed, thank goodness. Sometimes she forgets to shut it before bed, but tonight she remembered.
But tonight, the thing isn’t in the closet.
Instead, it lurks in the far corner of the room, a shadow that doesn’t quite make sense. It unfolds, limb after spindly limb, soft-edged and indistinct. Watching it is like watching smoke wisp from an extinguished candle—there’s no substance, only movement. What begins as smooth and fluid turns jerky and jittering, a creeping creature that shivers like static on an old television, and all the girl can do is stare. She almost can’t even see it when she looks head‑on; its outline is clearer if she peeks from the corner of her eye. That’s changing, though— last night it was a little easier to see than the night before, and tonight it’s darker still, and more solid.
It’s growing stronger
She wants to open her mouth, wants to scream for her mother, but her mother isn’t here. And besides, what if the shadow unspools itself while her mouth gapes open? What if it reaches a thread-thin arm inside her, right down her throat? The thought makes a gag rise, sticking like gristle on the back of her tongue.
The shadow stares without eyes, its head tilting to the left. Its only facial feature is a gaping maw of a mouth, always open. When it moves toward her, it neither walks nor floats. It almost seems to pulse from place to place, vibrating like a sound wave. It drags one arm—a jagged tendril where a hand should be—against the wall, loud and hard enough to leave a scrape, but the girl knows that when she checks tomorrow, the drywall will be unmarked.
She hears the shadow breathing. It takes in air through that unhinged mouth, stealing the oxygen from the room.
She shoves against the paralysis, fighting invisible bindings like a fish tangled tight in a net. Fear fuels her struggle, and as the thing stretches, as its thread-thin arm drifts closer, closer, almost touching her cheek, she wrenches her jaw open. And for just a shimmer of a second, she forgets.
“MOM!”
Victorious and petrified, she clamps her mouth shut against the reaching tendril. But the shadow is already gone.
For tonight, at least.
Thunder growls once more outside the window as the paralysis fades and the girl sits up in a tangle of bedsheets. She screamed for her mother, but it’s her father who will scurry in and fuss. “Nellie, again?” he’ll say, his exasperation clear even as he gathers her in his arms. “How many times do we have to do this? It was just a dream! Did you use the flashlight?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Honey . . . you have to try.” He doesn’t understand. He thought the big, heavy Maglite would make her feel safer. Just turn it on and the shadow will disappear. As if anything could be that easy. As if she could ever move enough to do so in the shadow’s presence.
Tomorrow there will be another conversation with the therapist the girl has been seeing for her recurrent night terrors. She’ll be asked to draw more pictures of the shadow, to describe it, to practice visualizations and reframings and meditations meant to diffuse its terrible hold. The therapist will repeat to her father that the sleep paralysis, the hallucinations, the panic attacks, all of it is just a manifestation of Nellie’s anxiety over her parents’ recent separation and her mother’s abrupt departure. She’ll even try to blame some of it on the late- spring storms that have begun coasting through at night as Florida’s rainy season settles in.
Nellie will insist, once again, that she’s not afraid of storms or thunder or lightning. She’ll speak up, but no one will listen.
The shadow is just a phase, the therapist will say. It’s Nellie’s brain working things out, and someday soon it will fade away into nothing. She keeps saying that, keeps making the same prediction, but it never seems to come true.
And tomorrow night, Nellie knows, the shadow will be back.
Chapter One
Saturday, April 18
“Is that a ukulele?” Harry asks.
I glance at the uke case in my left hand. “Yeah.”
He carries a few of my other bags down the driveway for me. “Cool. I know you’re in chorus—”
“Used to be,” I remind him, trying to keep my words from forming sharp points. Chorus is a delicate topic for me.
“Okay, used to be— but I didn’t know you played an instrument, too.” He hefts my suitcase into the hatchback of his green SUV, tucking it next to his and Harper’s luggage, and a thick lock of slightly sweaty chestnut hair falls over his forehead. He shakes his head to keep it out of his eyes. “Going to give us a little concert this week?”
“What? I wasn’t . . . I mean, maybe. I don’t . . .” I stumble over my refusal, regretting that I didn’t stow the case in a tote or a duffel bag to keep it from drawing attention. “No,” I manage finally.
Harry tilts a brow. There’s a question on his tongue, so close to escaping that I can almost hear it already, and my thoughts spin, searching for a believable excuse, wondering why I didn’t think to come up with one before. But after a pause he lets it go and nods toward his SUV. “Is that everything? Ready?”
“Yeah.” I get in back and stash the case by my feet while he folds his lanky form into the driver’s seat. I’ve known Harry for years, for as long as his younger sister, Harper, and I have been friends, and he’s always been just a little too tall for his own good, like he’s never quite grown into himself.
If we— Harper, Dia, and I—have to have a chaperone this week, though, Harry should be a bearable one. He’s only a year older than us, and he used to tattle on Harper and me for all kinds of things— doing messy art projects in Harper’s carpeted bedroom, racing our bikes through Winter Park’s congested downtown, giving my Barbies edgy haircuts and experimental surgery— but he got a lot more tolerable three years ago, after we caught him sneaking vodka from his stepfather’s liquor cabinet. We struck a compromise: Harry laid off his tattling, at least somewhat, and we kept our own mouths shut in return. It’s not like either of us cares if he drinks—Harper sneaks booze all the time—but having something to hold over his head made things easier for us.
Plus, years of taking care of his sister while their then-single mother worked multiple jobs had forced him to learn how to cook once they tired of peanut butter and boxed macaroni and cheese. I can whip up some decent meals, too, but I can’t begin to match what he’s taught himself from YouTube tutorials. A week with Harry looking out for us means a week of his cooking, and I’m definitely looking forward to that. Harper told me he’s already planned several menus, which is just . . . so Harry.
“Seat belt?” he asks, watching me in the rearview mirror. There’s the chaperone. I nod, holding back a snort- laugh. I didn’t even get a lecture from my father about behaving myself while I’m away. He knows we won’t have many opportunities for trouble with Harry around.
Harry checks his blind spots twice before backing out of my driveway. “We’ll get Dia first, then swing by the office for Harper.”
“Did she really get roped into working this morning?”
“You know how Charlie is,” he says, referencing their stepfather.
“There’s always time for just a little more work.”
Harper and Harry’s mother was practically a hippie back before she met Charlie, and I’ve never understood how the two of them clicked—how does a laid-back single mom end up with an uptight, type-A entrepreneur? Charlie shoved his way into their family and took it over, and now Harper gets to be the weekend receptionist at Charles Warner Incorporated whether she wants to or not.
We pick up Dia on the way. She’s on her front porch, waving from beneath a floppy hat, her spring tan glowing against her white eyelet sundress. Dia likes to brag that, because she’s Cuban, she never burns. By the end of our trip, she’ll be gloriously bronze while I’ll turn neon pink despite my SPF slathering. Her embroidery tote sits next to her suitcase; I’m not surprised that she’s taking her favorite hobby along for the week.
“Nell!” She envelops me in a hug, then gives Harry the same treatment, turning his cheeks pink. She’s had a crush on him since the day they met. I wish she’d chill, especially since Harry just broke up with his boyfriend two weeks ago. That’s not the issue—Harry’s bi, so theoretically, he and Dia could work—but I don’t want her throwing herself at him all week and ending up in rebound territory.
In the SUV, she tosses her hat back with the luggage and runs her hands over her auburn ponytail.
“No hat hair,” I reassure her softly, and she grins.
“How’s school going?” she asks Harry on the way to Charles Warner Inc. “I keep hoping I’ll see you around campus on Thursdays.” She never misses a chance to remind Harry that, thanks to
her dual-enrollment status, she’s technically a University of Central Florida student, just like him.
“Fine. Stats is kicking my ass.”
She leans forward. “Maybe I could help you study sometime.”
“Um . . .” Harry’s ears turn as pink as his cheeks.
“Wasn’t your spring break last month?” I ask, jumping to his rescue. “Are you off this week?”
He shakes his head. “My World War I presentation for European History is on Monday, and I’ve got a stats exam on Thursday, so I’ll need to drive back for those. The three of you are going to have to behave yourselves while I’m gone.”
“Okay, Dad.” I chuckle.
He catches my eye in the rearview again. “You aren’t the one I’m worried about, Nell.”
“I could go with you to campus on Thursday,” Dia presses.
“We’re here!” Harry says a little too loudly, pulling into a spot at the business complex that houses Charlie’s main office. “I’ll run in and get Harper.”
“No need.” I point to the building’s glass door as Harper strides out, her expression less than happy.
“You’re late,” she says, jumping in up front next to Harry.
“You were scheduled until noon. It’s 12:05.”
“That was five minutes too many with Charlie.” She twists around and plasters on a smile, and it’s dazzling even though I know her well enough to tell that it’s fake. Harper is like a living photo filter, the kind that gives the illusion of poreless skin and long, sooty eyelashes—only the lashes that frame her enormous brown eyes are 100 percent real, and her lips are a rosy flushed pink with no need for gloss, and her deep brown hair is somehow always perfect, with shiny tendrils framing her face even when she twists it into a clip for work. “Hey, babes! Can you believe that dickwad made me work all morning?”
Harper is no fan of her stepfather, and neither am I, but I can’t bring myself to complain about the person paying for this extravagant trip. Or for Harry’s car, or the family’s house, which is a hell of an upgrade from where Harry and Harper grew up. “At least you escaped,” I say as Harry gets back on the road, pointing us toward I‑4.
Harper hums in agreement, settling back in her seat, then wiggling to pull out her phone when it chimes with an incoming message.
“Gavin?” Dia guesses as Harper’s manicured nails dance over her screen, typing a reply.
“Of course.” Harper laughs a little. “I’m not sure the poor boy’s going to survive the week without me.”
Gavin.
Back in February, when Harper first proposed the spring break trip, I had one question. “Will Gavin be there?” We were eating lunch on Winter Park West High’s senior patio. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw her fingers clench her water bottle just a little tighter when I said his name.
“Mom and Charlie would kill me,” she responded after a beat.
“And you know Harry would rat me out. So what do you think? You, me, Dia. Nice house/ Private island. Our own beach.”
“And Harry.”
“We’ll ignore him.”
“Dia won’t.”
Harper laughed. “I thought she was going to explode when I mentioned he’d be there. I kept expecting little hearts to start spinning around her head like in a cartoon.”
“You already asked her?”
“Yeah, last night. I knew she’d be at UCF today.”
I tried not to let it bother me that my two closest friends had been planning this trip without me.
“So you’re coming, right? Mom already convinced Charlie to pay for the whole week as a graduation present.”
“Just us and Harry,” I said. “No Gavin.”
“Jesus Christ, Nell.” Harper’s expression hardened. “Look, I know you hate my boyfriend for whatever reason, but—”
“I don’t hate him,” I lied. “And yes, of course I’ll go.” How could I not? In the fall, Harper, Dia, and I would all head in different directions. I couldn’t even fathom that yet. If we didn’t do this now, when would we? Besides, Harper and I needed some quality best friend time, especially after the past year, when our bond had grown increasingly brittle.
I wanted to make her promise about Gavin, but I held back.
Now, as we head northeast away from Winter Park, I picture a week spent lounging on the beach. Reading on the porch while the breeze off the Atlantic teases through my hair. Exploring the hidden corners of St. Felicitas with my two best friends.
A week hours away from Gavin.
So Witches We Became is available now, wherever books are sold.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB